Increasing Public Savings Crucial to Sustain Economic Growth

We all know that one of the major obstacles in sustaining India's economic growth (including the agricultural sector) is the scarcity of capital. Recent years have seen some improvement in the country's savings and investment rates, though with marginal reversal in the trend of growing dissavings of the public sector. The public sector savings rate still remains negative. It is the private sector that is largely contributing to recent improvments in savings and investment rates. We will watch what GOI's forthcoming issue of Economic Survey has to say on this question. Unlike in the past, characterized as it was by politicians, we now have three well-known professional economists -- Messrs. Manmohan Singh (Prime Minister), Chidambaram (Finance Minister) and Montek Ahluwalia (Dy Chairman, Planning Commission) at the helm of India's macroeconomic affairs. The country should expect to have sound macroeconomic policies in place that are conducive to much-talked about increases in the rate of economic growth, currently at 7% going to 10%. Without determined effort to increase both public and private savings and investment rates, the launching of programs such as Bharat Nirman or Mission 2007 will prove to be merely populous, with limited or no outcomes? What do you think?